


Strong Enough to Break

by wilde_stallyn



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: DS, First War with Voldemort, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-16
Updated: 2006-08-16
Packaged: 2017-11-04 15:37:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilde_stallyn/pseuds/wilde_stallyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus Snape makes the first in a series of decisions that will change his life – and the course of the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strong Enough to Break

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://gmth.livejournal.com/profile)[**gmth**](http://gmth.livejournal.com/) for the 2005 [](http://reversathon.livejournal.com/profile)[**reversathon**](http://reversathon.livejournal.com/).

The sign on the door of the last stall in the washroom of Mabel's diner had read OUT OF ORDER in prominent red letters since May 1971, but none of the patrons or employees could ever work up the curiosity to wonder why it never got fixed, and even if any of them had been around when Severus Snape appeared in the stall at two in the morning in early July of 1980 they would, as always, have failed to notice the characteristic "pop" of Apparition. Severus laid his head back against the cool tile wall as he muttered the incantation that would activate the transportation spell woven around the stall. The Dark Mark on his forearm throbbed as the enchantments verified he was an authentic Death Eater and Severus braced for the inevitable wave of disorientation as the washroom dissolved around him. He seemed to hang in swirling space for a moment before materializing in a four-foot square stone chamber devoid of any apparent entry or exit. He had a brief moment to reassert his composure before the transportation spell activated again, taking him to another stone room identical to the first – or at least that was the theory.

There were supposedly a dozen of these chambers scattered across Britain and the transportation spell would take a Death Eater from any of the hundred activation sites in bathrooms, broom-closets and cellars across the country, through a random series of the stone chambers before taking him to the Dark Lord's headquarters, though for all Severus could say for certain there might only have been a single chamber to which he kept returning over and over again. The system was meant both to keep the Aurors from tracking any of the Death Eaters back to Voldemort, as well as to keep the true location of the Dark Lord's headquarters a secret from the Death Eaters themselves. The Wizard who had designed the system was said to have been a genius, combining the theoretical foundations of the Floo Network with the magic used for Portkeys in an entirely novel, and highly top secret manner, but Severus had never met him as the Dark Lord had killed him as soon as he had cast the last enchantment. Perhaps, if the Dark Lord had let him live, they would have won this war by now, Severus thought as he materialized in a third stone chamber.

That night Severus passed through six of the stone chambers before appearing at the end of the narrow corridor that was the only way in or out of the Dark Lord's stronghold. He cleared his throat loudly, startling awake the sentry who was dozing against the wall. Obviously a new recruit. The guard leapt to attention under Severus' glare with a quick, "Sorry, Sir." Severus strode past him with a sneer, nonchalantly sending a quick curse back to charm his eyelids open. A few hours without the ability to blink would teach him to stay awake when on duty.

The Dark Lord's headquarters were carved out of solid rock. Torches lined the long, low-ceiling corridors, casting shadows across the rough, unfinished walls. The main corridor opened into a large, natural cavern lined with marble statues of cobras poised to strike. On the far side of the cavern a pair of enormous bronze doors emblazoned with the Dark Mark barred the entrance to Voldemort's throne room.

The snake on the Dark Mark hissed at Severus, flicking its bronze tongue out to identify his scent before disappearing to the other side of the door to inform the Dark Lord of Severus' presence. After a few minutes, the doors opened and Severus went to kneel before the dais. The Dark Lord's attention was fixed on the wall to his left where Bellatrix was torturing a group of Muggles. The Muggles were not particularly physically attractive, so Severus gathered the evening had begun as an interrogation, rather than pure entertainment. From the look of the half-conscious bodies hanging from the chains though, it appeared that Bellatrix had long since wrung the desired information from her charges.

When the last of the Muggles had finally breathed his last breath and Severus' knees were starting to ache from being ground into the marble floor, Voldemort turned to Severus. "Report."

"The potion is promising, my Lord," Severus answered. "A few minor modifications should make it suitable for our purposes."

The Dark Lord's crimson eyes gleamed in the flickering torchlight and his thin lips drew back in the semblance of a smile. "Good. Have it ready within the week."

"Yes, my Lord," Severus murmured, but Voldemort's attention had already returned to his previous amusements. The Dark Lord leaned back in his throne and spoke in the low hiss of Parseltongue. An answering hiss echoed through the room and Nagini slithered out of her customary place behind the dais. She wound her way over to where the bodies of Bellatrix's Muggles still hung from the wall and flicked her forked tongue at them to taste their scent. She pulled her nose back from the bodies and let out a harsh hiss that Severus didn't need to be a Parselmouth to know meant she was not exactly pleased with the dinner menu, but looked expectantly at Bellatrix nonetheless. Bellatrix released the bodies from their shackles with a wave of her wand and the great snake swallowed the first man whole.

Nagini had moved on to her second Muggle when Voldemort remembered Severus was still kneeling at his feet. "You may be dismissed, Severus," he said without taking his eyes off the scene in front of him.

Severus slowly made his way back towards the doors, but he had to wait until Nagini's show was over before he could leave. The bronze python that controlled the doors had developed something of an obsession with the Dark Lord's favourite serpent and absolutely refused to be distracted long enough to open the door until she had returned to her hollow behind the throne.

Severus slipped out of the throne room and moved off down the corridor that lead to his private rooms. Most of the Death Eaters chose not to live in the Dark Lord's underground stronghold, preferring to maintain their positions in mainstream Wizarding society, but for Severus it was sufficient. He had his own Potions laboratory there, and the Knockturn Alley shopkeepers who distributed his concoctions were not the type to ask awkward questions about one's place of residence or political affiliation. When he had completed his apprenticeship and earned his Potions Mastery a month previous, Severus had felt he had little further need for most of the Wizarding World in it's current state.

When he reached his chambers, Severus sat down heavily in the room's only chair and rubbed his aching knees. His living quarters were cramped and the furnishings strictly utilitarian; the table with its lone chair, his bed and a small, badly-crafted wardrobe. He could have had more space, but he had converted the suite's other room into his Potions lab.

Severus pulled off his Death Eater mask and tossed it onto the bed with a sigh. He took his notebook and a small, half-empty potion bottle from inside his robe. Placing the notebook on the table beside him, he stared at the vial of emerald potion, turning it over in his hands. What was the Dark Lord thinking? "Make me a potion, Severus," he had said. "A potion that will kill Muggles by the thousands. And make them suffer, Severus, make them suffer." But what was the purpose? So they would eradicate half of Muggle London before the imbeciles could realize that it was something in their water supply that was killing them, but it wouldn't win them the war, it wouldn't gain them any control of the Wizarding World. They all talked of bringing down the Mudbloods who had taken over the Ministry and returning the power to Pureblood hands, but ten years into this so-called war and the Dark Lord had yet to make any serious move towards dominance of the Wizarding World.

Severus was pulled from his musings as the door opened and Lucius entered the room. Severus glared at him. "I see the art of knocking still alludes you."

Lucius smirked. "And you have yet to learn to lock your door." He frowned as he surveyed the bare room with distaste. "Why must you insist on living in this over-grown cellar?" he asked, coming to lean against the table.

"Lucius, do we really have to discuss this every time you decide to drop by?"

"I just don't see why you choose to live like this," Lucius said with a broad gesture at the meagre furnishings.

"It's sufficient," Severus said, crossing his arms across his chest. "Where else am I going to go? I am certainly not moving back in with my parents."

Lucius moved to stand between Severus' legs. "You could always accept the rooms I've offered you at Malfoy Manor."

Severus scowled up at him from the chair. "I will not be your kept boy."

Lucius laughed. "As though anyone would truly believe that. You haven't the features for it, my dear Severus," he said, running a finger down Severus's hooked nose.

"I haven't heard you complaining when you're fucking me into the wall."

"Well, I do have rather perverse tastes," Lucius replied with a smirk.

"I also think your wife would likely object were I to move into the Manor," Severus pointed out.

"Narcissa is well aware that I have my own… amusements," Lucius said, tilting Severus' head back to claim a kiss. "Just as I know she has hers. She doesn't interfere with my affairs, and so long as she produces a true-blooded heir, I won't interfere with hers."

Lucius curled his fingers in Severus' lank hair and stepped back from the chair. Severus slid to the floor, wincing as his tender knees pressed into the hard stone. Lucius looked down at him expectantly and tightened his grip on Severus' hair. Severus' hand flew up to unbutton Lucius' robes and push them aside to reveal his naked cock. Lucius gasped as Severus ran his tongue up the underside of the hard length, licking teasingly around the head before taking him into his mouth. Severus ran his hands up Lucius' legs to grasp the older man's hips as he struggled to open his throat wide. Severus eyes watered as Lucius fucked his mouth, scraping his cock over the back of his throat. Severus moved a hand to caress Lucius' balls. Lucius moaned and yanked Severus' mouth off his cock as Severus pressed his fingers against the tender skin of his perineum.

"Bed. Now," Lucius growled, pulling Severus to his feet and pressing him down onto the mattress. Then Lucius stepped back for a moment to remove his wand from his robes, and banished Severus' clothing with a quick spell before shrugging off the rest of his own attire and returning to the bed. He pinned Severus' wrists above his head with one hand and retrieved the younger man's wand, wrapping Severus' trapped hands around the it.

"Don't let go," he ordered in a harsh whisper before letting go of Severus' wrists and lowering his lips to catch Severus' in a searing kiss. Their tongues warred between their mouth as Lucius ran his hands down Severus' thin torso to cup his aching cock. Lucius pulled back from the kiss to summon a bottle of lube from the bathroom and coated his left hand in the slippery liquid, then he bent to suck at the side of Severus' throat as he traced Severus' pucker with his slick fingers.

Lucius licked and sucked his way down Severus' neck as he worked his  
fingers into him. Severus gasped as Lucius' mouth descended onto his right nipple, then moaned as the fingers inside him found his prostate. Lucius drove Severus to distraction with his fingers massaging his prostate before biting done hard into the flesh around his nipple, sending him arching back against the bed.

Then Lucius withdrew his fingers and coated his cock with more lubricant. He entered Severus with a single thrust and set a pace that left him gasping. Lucius pounded into Severus hard, until the younger man was on the brink of orgasm, and then slowed, only to repeat the process, bringing him to the edge over and over again as Severus struggled to keep hold of the wand. When Severus finally couldn't take it anymore and was making a low, almost pained noise in his throat at every thrust, Lucius wrapped his hand around Severus cock, stroking in time with the pump of his hips. Three firm strokes and Severus was gone, crying out as he arched off the bed and nearly snapped his wand with the force of his orgasm. Lucius let go of Severus' wilting cock and grasped his hips as he made a few last wild thrust. He let out a low groan as his cock spasmed, his fingernails marking Severus' sides as he came.

Lucius slid out and collapsed on to the bed where they lay in silence for a few moments. Then Lucius rose, pulled his robes back on, and left without another word.

* * *

Severus spent most of the following day in his laboratory refining the potion. He was attempting to extend the period between initial contact with the potion and the onset of the effects when there was a knock at door. He opened it with a wave of his wand and Lucius walked into the room.

"I see you took my advice about locking the door," Lucius said with a smirk.

"I always lock the lab," Severus replied blandly, measuring out exactly three ounces of banana slug pus.

"How is the potion progressing? The Dark Lord wants us to test it tonight."

Severus glared at Lucius. "I am perfectly capable of testing the potion without your help."

Lucius raised an elegantly arched eyebrow. "You're welcome to take up that argument with the Dark Lord if you're so inclined."

Severus scowled. "I still have to adjust the potion so that it is effective at a much greater dilution. Meet me in the empty suite at the end of the second hallway at eight o'clock. It should be ready for testing by then," he said and turned back to his work. "Oh, and bring a test subject with you."

* * *

Severus was mixing a small drop of the potion into a tub full of water in the empty suite's bathroom when Lucius entered the room with a naked, Petrified, Muggle girl levitating behind him.

"Dip her hand in the tub, then bind her to the bed in the main room and revive her. I need her conscious to get accurate data," Severus said, slipping the bottle of potion back into his robes.

"Why just her hand?"

"Because I need to be sure the effects will spread to her whole body even if only a small area comes in contact with the potion."

Lucius levitated the girl over to the tub and let her hand fall in. Then he moved her into the bed chamber, shackled her to the bed and cast Finite Incantatum. The girl screamed when she came around and began struggling fruitlessly against her chains. Lucius smiled down at her. "It looks like I chose a good one tonight, Severus. She's lovely," he said, reaching down to squeeze her left breast.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Severus said as he pulled a chair up to the side of the bed and took out his notebook. "The potion does work on contact."

Lucius was already undoing the buttons on his robes. "But she only has potion on her hand."

"Did I not just finish explaining that it spreads?"

Lucius shot a mildly horrified look at Severus, and then glanced down as though to make sure his hand was still there. "I thought you said you had an antidote prepared."

"I do, but I haven't tested it for unpleasant side-effects yet. Now, step away from the girl; I can't make proper observations if you're fucking her."

Lucius sighed, but pulled up a second chair beside Severus and sat down. "What exactly are we looking for?"

"In approximately six hours her flesh should started to dissolve from the outside in."

The girl had gone quiet while they were arguing, but she started struggling anew when she heard exactly what was in store for her.

"Lovely," Lucius said with a cruel smile. Then the smile faded. "Six _hours_?"

"The delay will maximize the number of Muggles who will come in contact with the potion before they realize we've contaminated the water supply."

"Well, if I can't touch _her_ , there are still a few other ways I can think of to pass the time," Lucius purred, turning to Severus and running a hand up his thigh.

"Stop that," Severus said sharply, glaring at the offending hand. "I'm trying to take notes."

* * *

Eight hours later Severus stared down at the mutilated corpse still shackled to the bed. Lucius had already gone to report the success of the potion to the Dark Lord, leaving Severus to clean up the mess of their experiment. Severus knew he should have incinerated the body already, but he couldn't look away from her. Scraps of flesh and bits of internal organs hung dripping blood from the girl's skeletal remains. Severus lifted his wand, but he couldn't speak the incantations around the bile in his throat as the sounds of her dying screams echoed through his mind.

He had always known he would have to kill and torture and witness horrible pain if he wished to help bring revolution to the Wizarding World. Even at sixteen, he had not been naïve enough to believe they could win this war with the clean death of the Killing Curse alone, but this was not war; this - this was slaughter and suffering for its own sake and it would win them nothing.

Severus tried to close his eyes to block out the scene in front of him, but that just brought the uncountable other horrors he had walled up in the back corner of his mind crashing forwards to spill across the back of his eyelids. He saw the ecstatic looks of fascination and triumph on the faces of the Dark Lord, and Bellatrix, and even Lucius as a series of countless unnamed victims were flayed open, their minds broken and their bodies running with blood, and on the tail of those images of torture came a realization.

There would be no revolution. The Dark Lord had no intention of winning this war; he was enjoying his blood sport far too much for that. Voldemort was well-nigh immortal; he could remain the Dark Lord forever, hidden underground, ruling the world through the terror he invoked without ever make any move to change the Wizarding World.

That thought turned itself over in his mind until it had pushed aside everything else and he was finally able to whisper a hoarse " _Incendio_ " and set the bed aflame. Then he sank to the floor to watch it burn.

* * *

It was a bright, sunny morning when a small, nondescript, Public-Post owl winged into the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Albus Dumbledore looked up from his ever-growing stack of paperwork and scratched the little, brown bird under the chin. The owl let out an inquiring hoot and Albus reached up and untied the package from around its leg. A blank sheet of parchment fell away to reveal a small bottle of turquoise potion. Albus examined the bottle closely, then gave it a quick shake and put it aside to pick up the scrap of parchment. As his fingers touch its surface, a brief message appeared scrawled across the parchment.

_Headmaster Dumbledore,_

_On July 16th the Dark Lord will poison the water supply for Muggle London. This bottle contains the antidote. You will have six hours before the casualties begin._

The note was unsigned, but Albus smiled as he ran his finger across the jagged script. He turned to Fawkes who stared at him grumpily and shook out his bedraggled feathers. "And here I had almost thought we'd lost that one."


End file.
